In general I've had good experiences with the office furniture from IKEA. My current desk is a custom oiled wood butcher block slab with (adjustable) IKEA legs, and the legs are perfect - easy to install, don't slip, stable etc.
I suppose you mean IVAR, but then I'm surprised as I have practically the whole IVAR assortment, coming mostly from when we had a move at work and renewed furniture there. The wooden racks, wooden cupboards, metal cupboards, I have them all and I love them. They have followed me through multiple house moves as well. They replaced basic pine racks that I got from some hardware store, that were not much cheaper and much less sturdy even though... well I still use them anyway, so I guess they're not so bad.
At one time I turned one IVAR metal cupboard into a growbox for tropical plants (the hollow space at the bottom and the mobile rack inside were pretty handy for running wires, pipes and placing the equipment) and it held very well the humidity, that was about ten years ago, I turned it back into a normal cupboard now and it's still as new. I now use a MILSBO cabinet as my indoor greenhouse.
Your mention of cubboards might be the thing - you need to build it out around the cupboard instead of trying to just use it for shelves.
Ha! They don't even sell 937.636.09 anymore, so maybe the problem was those damn corners. I ended up using https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-2455/Chrome-Wire-Shel... instead, and the thing was cheaper than the IVAR.
More power to you, wish I could have sent all the pieces to someone; as it was I burned them in rage.
I would expect wire metal shelving to be much cheaper than what you can find at Ikea of course, but also quite flimsy.
Now I'm no Ikea salesman but I always fail to understand what I read on HN (or other US-centric social media sites, as far as I can tell?) when the topic of Ikea comes around.
Prior to that, and now again, they are metal.
They have also discontinued it. Probably related to this article since they were made with solid wood.
They probably still have similar wood countertops you can buy and use for the same purpose, though.
Not just particleboard.
The closest you'll get now are particleboard tops with "thick" veneer. VRENA and MÖLLEKULLA use "thick" oak veneer; KARLBY, BARKABODA, and PINNARP use a "thick" walnut veneer. Veneer being IKEA's choice of words, not mine. These have traditional laminate on the underside.
SKOGSÅ uses "thick" veneer on all sides but is still a particleboard core.
SÄLJAN and EKBACKEN are laminate.
TOLKEN is solid bamboo (this must be new).
I just looked it up and it was the Galant desk with T-frame legs, sadly discontinued in 2014.